At present, under the fierce competition in the mobile music client market, Netease Cloud Music has increased its competitive chips by arranging videos, musicians, advertisements and live broadcasts. The obvious benefits also affect the experience of some users. At the same time, copyright issues have also led to the reduction of its users. But overall, Netease Cloud Music can still occupy a large share in the market with its strategic positioning of "music+social".
According to the data of iiMedia Research, the mobile music client industry in China continues to develop steadily, with the number of users reaching 533 million in the third quarter of 2018 (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: The scale of music client users in the third quarter of 2018 (data from Ai Media Consulting)
This data, the test report in the first quarter of Ai Media Consulting was 514 million (an increase of 1.78% compared with the fourth quarter of 2017, see Figure 2 for details). Although it has been predicted in the first quarter report of Ai Media Consulting that the user scale of mobile music client in China is gradually saturated and the market structure is stable, the user scale is still slowly expanding.
Figure 2: User scale of mobile music client in China from 2016Q1-2018Q1 (data from Ai Media Consulting)
According to the monitoring report of mobile music client in China in the first half of 2018, 66.7% of the interviewed mobile music client users are willing to pay for products or services in the client in the first half of 2018. With the increase of users’ willingness to pay for copyright, the competition of music platforms has gradually increased from single-point competition such as copyright and content to all-platform and all-field ecological competition.
To sum up, the market scale in China mobile music client industry is slowly expanding, and users’ willingness to pay is increasing. Moreover, the competition in the mobile music client industry in China has gradually shifted from copyright to pan-entertainment eco-competition in all fields.
In the mobile music client industry in China, the current camps have been basically stable. Since the advent of Cool Dog in 2004, Netease Cloud Music was born in 2013, and it quickly occupied the market as a dark horse. The scale of the mobile music client industry in China basically formed a three-legged pattern: Tencent Music (TME, including QQ Music, Cool Me Music and Cool Dog Music), Netease Cloud Music and Ali Music (including Xiami Music and Everyday Music).
As of July 2018, according to Quest Mobie data (see Figure 3 for details), the monthly user scale of online music industry top5APP is occupied by these three camps. Among them, TME harvested the top three.
Figure 3. Monthly user scale of online music industry top5APP (data from QUEST MOBIE)
All the above are the general situation of the whole industry.
So what is the situation of the whole industry for Netease Cloud Music? We can see this from three figures (Figure 3, Figure 4 and Figure 5).
Figure 4 Changes in the number of people who overlap Tencent Music APP and Netease Cloud Music and the exclusive rate (data from QUEST MOBIE)
Figure 5 Comparison of main application indicators between Tencent Music and Netease Cloud Music APP in July 2018 (data from QUEST MOBIE)
Figure 3 We can see the volume gap between Netease Cloud Music and Tencent Music. In Figure 4, we see that from July 2017 to July 2018, the number of people who have Netease Cloud Music and Tencent Music has increased (that is, the number of people who have Netease Cloud Music Halo and TME products has increased). As can be seen from Figure 5, Netease Cloud has a high music retention rate and unloading rate.
Then according to the differences between Netease Cloud Music and Tencent Music in the past, we can draw a conclusion:
The reason why Netease Cloud Music overlaps with QQ music users is that the Copyright Bureau intervened in February this year, which made the copyright exchange between Netease Cloud Music and TME reach at least 99%. The difference of 1% (Tencent’s unique copyright is about 5 million, and 1% of the copyright is about 50,000 songs) leads to a decline in the user experience, which leads to such a high 7-day retention rate of Netease Cloud Music. The unloading rate is also so high.
Another data can also reflect the correctness of the high conclusion from the side (see Figure 6 for details).
Figure 6 (the first quarter of 2018) Nearly 80% of users are accustomed to using multiple digital music apps at the same time (data comes from Bida Consulting)
Figure 6 shows that it is difficult for a single APP to meet all the needs of users.
The reputation of Netease Cloud Music (especially in song list recommendation and UGC) has always been very good, but users actually install multiple softwares, which also proves from the side that the reason why the user scale of Netease Cloud Music is limited is the copyright limitation.
As mentioned earlier, the user volume of Netease Cloud Music is far less than that of TME, but Netease Cloud Music has always been the growth of users with the difference of "music+social" and the support of some die-hard fans.
As mentioned above, it is precisely because of the difference of "music+social interaction" that Netease Cloud Music will not become a niche APP even though its copyright is restricted. It occupies the fourth place in the total number of users, far higher than Xiami Music.
Then, what are the advantages of Netease Cloud Music in the current situation of obvious disadvantages?
As product people, we prefer the following data to prove the existence of advantages, and then analyze the advantages and make iterative updates for future products.
1.3.1 User activity
User activity is one of the standards that can best reflect the quality of a product. It measures the user’s attitude towards the current product.
According to the comparison between QuestMobie’s list of monthly users in online music industry in July 2018 (Figure 7) and the list of monthly users in online music industry in July 2017 (Figure 8), it is obvious that Netease Cloud Music has the fastest growth rate in this year, and it has already threatened a cool music in TME.
It can be seen that the obvious shortcoming of Netease Cloud Music-music copyright issue has not caused a fatal blow to Netease Cloud Music. The current layout of Netease Cloud Music is also successfully bridging the gap, but the gap is still very large.
Figure 7 (the same as Figure 3) The monthly user scale of online music industry in July 2018 top5 APP (data from QUEST MOBIE)
Fig. 8 Monthly users of online music industry in July, 2017 top10 APP (data from QUEST MOBIE)
1.3.2 User stickiness
User stickiness reflects another dimension of the product: loyalty to the product.
As we saw earlier, Netease Cloud Music has a higher 7-day retention rate and a higher uninstall rate than other top five apps. We analyzed it because of the copyright issue of Netease Cloud Music. Then, the user viscosity can let us clearly see how many users are loyal powder.
According to the comparison of the monthly average usage times and activity rates of Tencent Music and Netease Cloud Music APP in July 2018 (see Figure 9 for details), we can clearly see that compared with TME, Netease Cloud Music has no disadvantage in terms of monthly average usage times and activity rates, and even has more advantages in combination.
This represents the current operation mode of Netease Cloud Music (the core is "music+social"). In the case of short-board copyright, the user’s loyalty is still not worse than the other three, and even has an advantage.
Figure 9 Comparison of main application indicators between Tencent Music and Netease Cloud Music APP in July 2018
1.3.3 User coincidence degree
The user coincidence degree we analyzed earlier represents the situation that Netease Cloud Music and other APP functions complement each other.
The higher the degree of overlap, the higher the degree of functional complementarity (see Figure 10 for details), and the higher the possibility of being irreplaceable.
We mainly analyze the number of overlapping users between Netease Cloud Music and TME. The higher the overlap, the greater the possibility of representing Netease. The following figure shows that the overlap between Netease Cloud Music and TME is increasing from July 2017 to August 2018. Although their respective layouts have changed, the advantages and disadvantages of APP are obvious, but at present, from the point of view of coincidence, Netease Cloud Music does not have the conditions to beat TME, but the market will not be eaten by TME.
Figure 10 Changes in the number of people who overlap Tencent Music APP and Netease Cloud Music and the exclusive rate (data from QUEST MOBIE)
And a very interesting thing happened here. Netease Cloud Music not only has an increased overlap with TME, but also has an overlap murder book with Bili Bili and Tik Tok, which is far superior to other music apps. It is secondary, young and trendy (see Figure 11 for details). This shows that Netease Cloud Music has achieved initial results in the layout of video functions.
Fig. 11 The number of people and the exclusive rate of Netease Cloud Music, Billie Billie and Tik Tok (data from QUEST MOBIE).
Advertising delivery
The first is the comment area advertisement.
Comments are a major feature of Netease cloud music, and browsing comments has basically become the habit of Netease cloud music users. Often, some popular music (even minority music with the rise of Netease Cloud) has rich comments. Even sometimes I forget the name of a song and still remember the comments, so putting advertisements in the comments is more in line with the interests of cooperative manufacturers and Netease Cloud Music.
Secondly, the support for new musicians (such as advertisements for new musicians in the interface) has also become one of the incomes of Netease Cloud Music.
This move does not directly charge fees, but because they are all online musicians on their own platforms, the payment caused by their promotion is also one of the incomes. Moreover, it is a win-win situation between the platform and musicians, and musicians will also directly participate in the dividends of advertising and other expenses. It is said that Mu Xiaoya will get nearly one million dividends in 18 years, which will also drive more UGC creation.
Finally, it is the most common open-screen advertisement.
Open-screen advertisers are mainly the promotion of high-end brands and Netease’s self-operated products (such as Netease koala, etc.). This is the most conventional way to collect money for advertising.
value added service
Netease Cloud has three common value-added services:
First, vip charges, the most conventional way of charging. Getting vip can get a higher definition sound quality experience, and can experience the services of non-members, such as advertising-free, personalized skin, etc. The second kind of value-added service is also very routine at present: listening to songs without traffic. The last one is knowledge payment, such as "Chen Li Living Room", which needs to be paid before listening, similar to the payment of common knowledge such as getting it.
Yun music shopping mall
There are three main ways to cloud music mall:
- Integral mall, you can exchange points for coupons or vouchers of partners.
- Welfare society generally deals in products endowed with musical meaning or related to music. Similar to ordinary e-commerce operations, but some will receive vouchers.
- Ordinary e-commerce, selling their own goods or music areas.
But overall, Netease Cloud Music Mall is similar to the periphery of animation. Mainly engaged in music-related or music-endowed goods, the way to make a profit is simply to sell goods to make money.
Ticketing system
In order to solve the problem of scalping tickets, and unable to choose a suitable location or forget to buy tickets, Netease Cloud Music launched a ticketing system. The profit-making method is no different from other ticketing systems.
This not only serves the corresponding user groups in a targeted manner, but also reduces the impact of commercial advertisements on the user experience. Users click on the corresponding performance information and link to the specific page, where they can view the performance time, place, price and seats in detail and purchase tickets.
Netease Cloud Music is an APP that provides music services based on "music+social interaction" and takes users as the center. Relying on professional musicians, friends recommendation and social functions, online music title list, personalized recommendation, radio station, etc., focus on discovery and sharing.
In terms of music, with the song list as the framework, the user’s music needs are met through three sections: the song list established by the user, the daily recommendation recommended by the system and the song list of the system. On the social side, it is achieved through the song comments that Netease Cloud Music is famous for, as well as people and friends nearby. This enhances the sharing and communication properties of music, and pays attention to and encourages users to produce more high-quality UGC content to meet the needs of users’ music socialization, sharing and expression.
Netease Cloud Music is divided into five product structure branches: Personal Center, My Music, Discovering Music, Video and Search. Through the product structure of page analysis, we can see the bird’s eye view of the whole product and know the existence and completion process of each function. See Figure 12 for details.
Figure 12 Netease Cloud Music Product Structure Diagram (Analysis by Page)
Netease Cloud Music is a rising star in mobile Internet music. Netease Cloud Music has reached the fourth position in terms of mobile Internet music in terms of volume and users by means of "music+social interaction".
Figure 13 User Product Experience Path Map
Music is basically a necessity for almost everyone. Compared with all netizens, users of online music are obviously younger, and there is little difference in gender and intercity distribution characteristics (see Figure 14 for details).
According to the online music users’ age and inter-city distribution map in July 2018, users aged under 24, 25-30 years old and 31-35 years old account for 84.3% of the total users. The proportion of men and women is 51.4% and 48.6% respectively. According to TGI, female users are more consistent, which happens to be similar to the proportion of Netease cloud music users (see Figure 15 and Figure 16 for details).
According to Ai Media data, there are more women among Netease cloud music users. In addition, people under the age of 24, 25-30 years old and 31-35 years old account for more than 80% of the total users, reaching 89%. It can be seen that the distribution of user groups of Netease Cloud Music is basically consistent with the data of the whole industry, but the focus is slightly different.
Industry data shows that people under the age of 24 have the highest proportion, while Netease Cloud Music has the highest proportion of 25-30 years old; In terms of gender, Netease Cloud Music has slightly more women than men, while the whole industry data shows that men are slightly more than women, but TGI also shows that female users are more consistent.
Figure 14 The age and intercity distribution map of online music users in July 2018 (data from QUEST MOBIE)
Figure 15 Gender diagram of Netease cloud music users (data comes from iResearch APP index)
Figure 16 Age distribution map of Netease cloud music users (data from Ai Media Consulting)
In addition, according to QuestMobie’s online music user interest preference TOP20 in July 2018 (see Figure 17 for details), it can be seen that online music has a high penetration rate in various industries. Especially social, video and music. ; It can also be seen that music, learning and animation have higher values in the active penetration rate TGI.
Figure 17 TOP20 of online music users’ interest preference in July 2018 (data from QUEST MOBIE)
Comprehensive Netease Cloud Music is similar to the overall trend of the industry, with the age of about 24 to 35 years old, with little gender difference. In the entire online music industry, social, video and music have the largest active penetration rate, while music, learning and animation have the highest active penetration rate. We will get the user portrait of Netease Cloud Music as follows:
- Student groups:This group has more time, more social activities in the world, watching videos, listening to music, and more interest in school, and their age is basically under 24 and between 25 and 30.
- Young white-collar workers and Internet practitioners:Generally speaking, people in this group are more eager for new things than other age groups and industries. But relatively speaking, it belongs to a group with greater pressure, piecemeal time, more overtime, and more willingness to open up their own horizons and careers through study. It is a group with pressure, vitality and ambition, and rich feelings.
According to Netease Cloud Music’s recent layout of niche music, video and music originality, another user group of Netease Cloud Music can be deduced:
- Professional musicians and music creators:This group pursues fashion, freedom, sharing and quality.
According to Maslow’s demand analysis method, the priority of product functional design can be divided into five categories from high to low: usability, ease of use, ease of use, love of use and dissemination. According to this theory, we can get the product demand management priority of Netease Cloud Music, and then deduce the user demand of Netease Cloud Music.
As shown below:
Figure 18 Maslow Demand Analysis Diagram
"Music+Socialization" is basically what all music platforms are doing now, and Netease Cloud Music is a leader in this respect.
Netease Cloud Music’s approach is to make music resonate and communicate. People are emotional animals, especially when immersed in music, it is very easy to blend in or substitute their own experiences, and then they like to express their feelings about songs and share their experiences.
The music comment area has become the first stop for users’ UGC creation, and it also incorporates the social nature. When you can listen to songs, while listening to songs, you can watch stories that are similar or touching to yourself in the comment area, and you can pay more attention to commentators to achieve the purpose of socializing.
Figure 19 Screenshot of Netease Cloud Music Interface (1)
The second stop of UGC creation is the song list created by users themselves.
Everyone has his own taste, but there are always people who are similar to him, and there are always people who have songs that they like but haven’t heard. Therefore, song list recommendation came into being. Users can walk into the song list created by others through the song list name, classification or a piece of music with their own memories and feelings in the song list, discover new music, and even collect the song list.
When users use Netease cloud music, they will also classify their favorite songs. Your friends or through the nearby song list can also see the user’s song list and enjoy it, so as to achieve the purpose of "music+socialization".
Figure 20 Screenshot of Netease Cloud Music Interface (2)
The third stop of UGC creation is the music created by Netease Cloud musicians. This is the layout of Netease Cloud Music in terms of "copyright disadvantage+minority music+individual musicians". Introducing more musicians can not only satisfy the audience (especially the minority music audience), but also make people with musical talents or hobbies and dreams give full play to their own specialties and solve the copyright problems of some songs.
Figure 21 Screenshot of Netease Cloud Music Interface (3)
The social function is divided into four parts, namely, music comment socialization, song list socialization, and the dynamics of people and friends nearby. Among them, the socialization of music criticism and song list has been described in detail, so I won’t repeat it here.
The function of people nearby is a combination of "unfamiliar social interaction+music". Through the dynamics of people nearby, you can see the kinds of music that other users like. Even if you don’t pay direct attention to communication, you can make users enjoy more different songs through the song list or dynamics of people nearby, break the cognition of their original songs and increase the user’s stickiness.
Now, with the addition of video, we can not only see music and song lists through people nearby, but also see videos. Video is one of the key points in the layout of major companies now. The function of people nearby can also enhance users’ new understanding of Netease Cloud Music Halo, that is, "Netease Cloud Music Halo not only makes music, but also makes videos", thus achieving the purpose of diversification of Netease Cloud Music functions.
Friends are dynamic, which is similar to socializing with strangers. You can also see the songs and videos of users’ friends. The biggest difference is that friends tend to "socialize with acquaintances" dynamically, while people nearby socialize with strangers. Therefore, socializing with acquaintances has a unique advantage-it can communicate with each other through music. Even though a large number of users do not reach the point of acquaintance or communication through friends, the dynamics of friends have reached the social role as well.
Figure 22 Screenshot of Netease Cloud Music Interface (4)
Music recommendation is another major feature of Netease Cloud Music, which is mainly manifested in scene recommendation and personalized recommendation based on big data analysis.
Scene recommendation has the following functions in Netease Cloud Music: song list, recommended song list, anchor radio station, radio station classification, classical zone and other functions classified according to mood and environment; And a more distinctive running FM, dedicated to running scenes.
This greatly facilitates users to choose music that is more suitable for their mood according to their mood, environment and other conditions, and increases customer satisfaction, stickiness and loyalty. On the other hand, Netease Cloud Music has personalized recommendation based on scene classification, and users can also classify their own songs according to their own habits after using habits to enhance sociality.
Figure 23 Screenshot of Netease Cloud Music Interface (5)
Personalized recommendation is another function of Netease Cloud Music Word of Mouth Peak. Many users have shared music in social circles before, and commented that "this song really suits me", "Netease Cloud Music really understands me" and "this song is so good that it cries", etc. This is based on the big data such as the type and frequency of songs that users like to listen to, analyzing the recent listening characteristics of users and making recommendations. Of course, big data analysis needs data, and personalized recommendation may not be particularly accurate if new users use it less.
Personalized recommendation is embodied in private FM, daily recommendation, daily song list and so on.
Figure 24 Screenshot of Netease Cloud Music Interface (5)
According to the statistics of ASO100 books, Netease Cloud Music has a high score on the iOS system (see Figure 25 for details). The current score (as of November 2018) and all version scores (as of November 2018) are 4.7 points, indicating that iOS users have a high evaluation of Netease Cloud Music.
Figure 25 Netease Cloud Music iOS score statistics (data from ASO100)
On the other hand, the score of Android system (see Figure 26 for details) is much lower than that of iOS, with the highest score of 4.6 and the lowest score of 3.5 (Google Play data is 0, which is not included in the statistics). This shows that the Android system needs to continue to be optimized to further improve user satisfaction.
Figure 26 Netease Cloud Music Android Score Statistics (data from ASO100)
Through the ASO100 data, the typical users’ positive comments and negative comments are extracted as follows (Figure 27). A typical user refers to a user who appreciates or hates a certain point in favorable and unfavorable comments, and is representative.
Figure 27 screenshot of typical user comments
From the comments, it can be seen that users’ views on copyright requirements are not one-sided. Some have uninstalled the software because of copyright problems, but some have directly ignored this defect and continued to use it, but the copyright problem is still one of the problems that need to be solved. After all, listening to songs is the most basic function of Netease Cloud Music. If this function cannot be met, other functions are not so necessary.
With the more and more perfect function of Netease cloud music and the addition of profit factors, some users began to question the initial intention of Netease cloud music while enjoying better experience services. For example, the addition of video can make "music+picture sense" presented to customers at the same time, but for some customers who just want to enjoy music or recommend videos to influence their use, these have become design failures.
According to user feedback and user ratings, it can be seen that Netease Cloud Music has a large number of supporters. Although the copyright and the new layout affect the experience of some users, users have a high evaluation of Netease Cloud Music on both Android and iOS. However, in order to better maintain a high reputation, Netease Cloud Music should better adjust the strategy between profitability, new function layout and user experience, and maintain the user stickiness of loyal fans, so as to ensure that it is invincible in the industry shock.
No matter which organization’s survey data, we can see that the total number of online music users is increasing, and users’ awareness of paying is enhanced. The online music industry is still a valuable market. However, in this competition, Netease Cloud Music’s defects in copyright make it relegated to TME. However, according to the strategy of "music+socialization", Netease Cloud Music, a rising star market, will not be swallowed up by TME or other competing products in the short term.
Netease Cloud Music keeps making various attempts to get rid of the dilemma. Layout videos, musicians, advertisements, live broadcasts, etc. are all increasing their competitive chips. The benefits are obvious, but the decline of user experience can not be ignored. Nowadays, the online music industry is laying out its own pan-entertainment ecosystem, especially TME, which has formed its own ecological closed loop. Netease Cloud Music still needs to make more attempts to break the blockade.
Regarding the copyright issue, I have analyzed the disadvantages of Netease Cloud Music. However, in the short term, this disadvantage is not only the efforts to obtain copyright, but also the cooperation between their own musicians and Netease Cloud Music to ensure that the copyright of minority music does not go wrong and that they do not show disadvantages in minority music.
Competition in the online music industry has a long history, and it is still unknown who will win in the future.
This article was originally published by @ Sima Shizike. Everyone is a product manager. It is forbidden to reprint without permission.
The title map comes from Unsplash and is based on CC0 protocol.